My First Block
Here Is my first block. Im a mechanical engineering student and did it for a design project. The base is 1/8" copper with a 1/4" copper centerpiece the base is soldered to the center piece. The top is polycarbonate 3/8" thick. The top is held to the block with 14 screws to provide even force over the entire perimeter of the piece. There are 8 channels that are each 0.1" wide cut into the center piece. The walls are 0.05" thick and are also soldered to the base. The channels provide a 1:4 flow restriction into the block which causes about a 650% increase in velocity in the liquid while it is in the block.
My goal was to create one that kept turbulent flow the entire time so that all of the water was in contact with the copper, not just the water on the outer edges, hence all of the sharp corners. To prevent isolation between the baseplate and the centerpiece they were soldered along the entire contact area. And just for style, my reservoir is a glass window brick.
All of the pieces were drawn up in Autocad, and after the final revision, were cut on a waterjet at the university. The tolerances on the machining of this piece were .0005" Doing all of the calculations took roughly 16 or 17 hours, the drawing in autocad about 10 hrs, and the actual machining and assembly about 3 hours.
The only issue is that I have no idea how well it actually performs. Like I said, this was for a project for the school, so I haven't put it in yet. The project is an experiment determining the relative effectiveness of several different methods of cooling.
1) OEM Aluminum Heat Sink and Fan
2) Solid Copper Heat Sink and Fan
3) Copper Heat Pipe
4) My Water Cooling System
I know that certian ones are better than others, but my question is HOW MUCH better? I should be doing the experiement some time next week, and then I will have actual performance data on the system.
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